The History of the 'F' Word
by Phoenix Satori
Summary: The Manifold Wonders of the Expletive, by Dr. Hiruma Yoichi, Esq. ::HiruMamo One-Shots, Epithets-GALORE::
1. yare, yare

Takes place immediately after the Beach Football Interlude in Texas, shortly before the Death March got underway.

And that's all I have to say.

Except: Mangoes. I love mangoes. (Also, I do not own the Eye, the Shield, or the number 21.)

* * *

She was a pretty little thing—leggy, slender, lithe, and she had some rather striking features to set her apart from the rest of the crowd: a wide, unguarded smile, fair, smooth features, and a crown of vibrant auburn to off-set and underscore a pair of big, big blue eyes –alternately laughing and sharp, bespeaking easy jollity and fierce protectiveness (the latter apparently reserved solely for the short, fast kid), as well as compassion and intelligence.

And, while she very certainly had no future in football (beach or otherwise), she seemed to grasp strategy effortlessly and understand intuitively where and how to move to exploit her full potential. She was no professional –not by any stretch of the imagination—but she was smart, agile, and gracefully athletic. For whatever unfathomable reason, the small kid seemed unwilling or unable to participate at maximum capacity while she was watching, which initially was somewhat hampering, until she'd realized that the more quickly the plays were over, and the further away from the ball the boy was, the more safe from any incidental harm he would be, and that's when she really started to show her colors. Really, though, he thought her efforts to protect the little kid were fairly endearing, and only added to her appeal.

Now, after the games were over, she was fussing over the aforementioned shorty, who seemed a little uneasy but otherwise gracious for her attentions, while the various other members of the Devilbats team busied themselves with trying –quite poorly—to flirt with American girls, or introducing themselves to a stoic and unflinchingly rigid Tetsuma, or (where the shorties and Kurita were concerned, at the very least) congratulating each other on winning the prize money.

Kid was never one to count his chicks before they hatched, of course, but none of the team's behaviors seemed to indicate anything more than a player-manager sort of bond with the girl in question (with the obvious, glaring exception of the mother-son dynamic she had going on with the fast kid), and for her part, she didn't pay any special attention to one over any of the others (once again with the notable exception of the chibi), so he figured it couldn't _hurt_, at the very least, to go and pay a few words of congratulations. It was only polite, after all, and so long as he went into it without expectation, then there was surely no problem.

"Anezaki-san," he started, just as the shortie managed to extricate himself from her mothering to go celebrate their victory with Kurita, his apparently-mute apprentice, and the kid who looked remarkably like a monkey, "I hope you won't take offense to my saying that you play a mean game of football." His grin was casual and disarming as she straightened from where she'd been kneeling next to Sena, and he caught the minute, high color in her cheeks. Things were looking far too well, far too quickly.

"Thank you, Kid-san," she executed a shallow bow, hands cupped in front of her in a decidedly feminine manner. Then, more confidently, turning the conversation away from her, "You weren't so terrible out there, yourself." Lightly, playfully, she patted his elbow, once, twice, before her arm dropped back down to her side, and by then he was wondering how he should construe the gesture so as not to overestimate her friendliness.

"I have my good days." Then, chucklingly, "Can't say I've ever bowled over a beach bum in nothing but a bikini, though." She was laughing, which was a good sign, which was, of course, not very likely a _good_ sign. He didn't mind the way her eyes verily glittered while she did, however.

"Guess I don't know my own strength—" She began, but was cut off an instant after Kid realized that the other half of the Super Quarterback Tag-team had suddenly appeared, an imposing-looking semi-automatic strapped to his back as he swooped in and abruptly (almost familiarly but _not quite_) laid one long-fingered hand on the small of her bare back, nudging her forward just so while the other gently, nimbly glided over the flesh of her stomach, and just as deftly as his fingers brushed away, the hand at her back became suddenly the arm around her shoulders as he began (cackling all the while) to speak,

"You'll have to keep this a secret, of course, but the real source of our fucking manager's strength is…" His narrow eyes slid from Kid's face to Mamori, who looked outraged, put-off, and a little indignant, but also slightly curious, expectant, "…the _creampuff_. This fucking woman packs them away like she's apprenticed to the porker, but she'll find other junk to fuel her gluttonous needs when there aren't any available. Kekekeke!" Kid blinked a few times as he watched the young lady –now fully blushing—try to smack the Devilbats' quarterback, but Hiruma had already neatly danced out of range, still chortling like a madman at her expense, and almost skipping away from the two of them.

Kid's eyebrows were high enough at this point to be hidden by the rim of his hat, and though it was his only visible response to the scene that had folded out before him, the young manager seemed to catch it just as she'd turned to pursue the cackling demon, and she took the time to bow shortly to and smile apologetically at him, embarrassment and anger now lining the red of her cheeks where before it had been flattery, and then she had taken off to give chase.

"Yare, yare…" He mumbled, and for a moment simply stood there. Eventually, however, he deserted his lonely spot on the beach in favor of the trees lining the outskirts, and with practiced ease and natural fluidity, he rolled his hat over his eyes and made himself comfortable in the shade, arms behind his head, back propped against the bark of the widest tree he could find.

A minute later, maybe two, he heard a gruff weight land nearby, and knew at once that Tetsuma was beside him.

"Things were just goin' too well for her to be single…"

* * *

Dedicated to Hiruma and Kid's apparently uncanny (and actually rather perturbing) ability to Read Each Other's Minds. For the sake of this story, we will pretend that Kid and Tetsuma are not inevitably going to marry each other in the Most Ridiculous Wedding of the Century.


	2. the spoils of war

Hastily scrawled semi-pRon. (My religion forbids proofreading.)

Rated R, kidlets.

Sugar-free, just the way The Devil likes it.

Ya-ha?

* * *

**the spoils of war**

He swallows the trembling whisper on her lips, crushing her against him when their bodies meet, and her hands are scoring painful trails down his shoulder blades, crisscrossing at his spine as she clings to him, her legs almost slipping (the air is heavy, warm, nearly stifling, and he –_they _are both slick from sustained exertion) as they tangle around him and the sheets and various discarded pieces of clothing (a shock of red and a solitary digit are twisted under their feet). She's not breathing, she thinks desperately, she can't remember how. And this must be what it feels like, she decides, to _win_. Heady, exhilarating, the adrenaline thrumming through your body and pooling in your head, dropping hard into your stomach, coiling tight, _exploding_—

"_Hiruma_," she gasps, pleading, frantic, hoarse. And then he collapses against her, makes a sound that only she will ever get to hear, and she can feel him smirking against her cheek, can feel his tongue sweeping under her jaw, over her ear, and she thinks, I can breathe now, I can see.

But then he's whispering, and she blinks, reddens, tries to move her keen mind past the sudden turmoil that his susurrant suggestion has inspired.

_"Second quarter, fucking manager." _

* * *

Hm. I have defined a new genre. I shall call it 'snapshot porn.'

And all shall rejoice in its name.

Amen.


	3. natural rhythm

**

* * *

**

Natural Rhythm

_(start, finish)_

It's the end of the world and the end of the season and the end of football, and Mamori walks into the clubroom to meet Hiruma, because she knows he's there, because she knows that it's his refuge, that it's the last place he's going to leave before he has to leave for good.

And he doesn't look at her or speak to her or even so much as flinch to acknowledge that he knows she's there, but he does know, and she knows he does, and she stands there at the door, watching him watching the shadows that the uniforms cast on the floor in their lockers, and she doesn't speak. Eventually, wordlessly, he turns to leave, and he doesn't look at her, doesn't look at anything at all, but he's looking forward, and he's got this half-hearted smirk (with just a hint of fang) to let her know that Everything is Different, but All is Well, and when he reaches the door, she laces her fingers through his, and his hand is large and warm against her palm and his fingers are long as they curl around her knuckles, like it's the most natural thing in the world, like they've been doing it forever, and when they walk out of the clubhouse together, she reaches up to turn out the lights and he reaches back to close the door behind them, and by the time the sunlight hits them he's got that self-same maniacal, depraved, demonic cast to his face again, and she squeezes his hand, and he mumbles out a non-committal _"fucking Anezaki"_ for good measure, and they leave the team behind.

But that's just the beginning.

* * *

Timmy stole my crackers.

Timmy had to die.


	4. las vegas Part I

Ahh, cliches.

Shall I count the ways I love thee?

DOI.

(takes place the morning after the Death March ends, in the hotel)

* * *

**what happens in las vegas...**

Mamori recalls waking up with the distinct feeling of (residual jet-lag coupled with some rather significant exhaustion from the Death March, mostly, but also) Impending Calamity, though she is not nearly so impressed with her (apparently superlative) clairvoyance when Calamity does, in fact, appear at the threshold of her door.

Rather more literally than she would have preferred, and with really just _dreadful_ timing.

* * *

The sun was up, slanting brilliantly through the window of her room, and gilding everything it touched. Birds weren't singing –Las Vegas simply didn't seem to be that sort of town—but the streets below were teeming with life, even at this early hour of morning. And, as she discovered happily when she opened her window, the wind was crisp, still slightly cool, and though the sky was far from crystal blue, it was nonetheless clear, promising pleasant weather for the day.

There were still plenty of things to worry about –where she was going to find a place to get her laundry done, how Sena was faring, whether or not she'd be able to wake everyone up in time for breakfast, where she was going to find the time to consolidate all of her notes for Hiruma so he wouldn't have to comb through pages and pages of extraneous data, how they were all going to get back to Japan…despite the many obstacles they had to overcome in the very, _very_ near future, Mamori felt optimistic –chipper, even. A full night's rest on an over-sized, over-stuffed bed had certainly been a luxury after most of the summer sleeping outside, on the ground, or in the bed of a cold, hard truck, and almost always exposed to the elements. And the euphoria –vicarious as well as her own (she'd had her fair share of tasks to accomplish while the Death March was underway, and so while she was hardly as tuckered out as any of the boys, she was certainly worn out as well)—from having completed that hellacious training camp was enough to revitalize her spirits and prepare her for whatever was to come.

It was with this outlook that she laid out the most (comparatively) clean outfit she had, and then went to indulge in another luxury she and the rest of the Devilbats' had gone without for (in her opinion) far too long –a nice, long, hot shower. And it was with this attitude that she emerged, wonderfully clean and smelling of generic hotel bath fragrance, hair pleasantly damp, skin tingling with refreshment, humming a nameless tune her mother favored for working around the house. And it was this very same sunny disposition that, as she started to work a towel through her hair, drying it single-handedly while the other clasped at another towel wound loosely around her body, her eyes on the world outside and her mind already turning over the Amefuto facts and figures she was imminently to tackle, was immediately and absolutely _destroyed_ when the Devil himself strolled casually into her room (as if he had every right in the world to be there, without announcement or permission), disaffected and uncouth as ever.

This, in and of itself, would have been infuriating (in the way that it screamed presumption and all-but whistled a ditty about his lack of respect for her privacy) and bewildering (since she was _sure_ she'd been the only one with a key to this room) enough, except that, as she _was not_ expecting anyone (least of all _him_) to be visiting without her needing to open the door for them first, and was hence shocked, appalled, and physically startled, she managed to add her own insult to his injury by _dropping her towel_.

Her humming had died an abrupt, nearly-choked death the minute the door had started to swing open, but now, with one hand frozen amidst the tangled locks of her hair and the much smaller hand-towel, the other quite effectively stilled beside her abdomen where it had instinctively tried (and failed) to catch the falling towel around her torso, she had to swallow the incriminating, indignant squeal that wanted to slip out in its wake.

It occurred to her at this point that the crude, tactless, _horrible_, pointy-eared devil in Japanese clothing was speaking to her, something about a classified playbook and cards and memorization and a team meeting, and that his eyes –thus far at the very least—were trained on the open notebook in his hands, and that he seemed thoroughly preoccupied with whatever he was looking at there. She almost dared to hope that she could make a mad dash back to the bathroom, or perhaps manage to pick up her towel before he even caught the movement.

So it was, naturally, this moment that his eyes left the notebook.

* * *

I already have Part II written out, it just feels a bit..._wrong_. Character-wise. And maybe a bit wordy. (Says the Terminally Verbose patient.)

If I can't fix it up like I want it by tomorrow, I'll just go ahead and post what I've got and let you folks tear it apart.

I mean, make friendly suggestions. About how to clean it up.

I'ma eatta donut now.


	5. las vegas Part II

Part II of the Las Vegas continuum.

(Lemme just say, for the record, that I HATE how this turned out, but I've stared at it for long enough, and I don't know what else to do with it. I'm also, quite frankly, sick of looking at it. I'd like to completely redo it at some point --it feels off from start to finish-- if I can manage to get the motivation to expend such an effort...which is not nearly so likely as you might think.

Anyway, mucho sorries for the Massive Heart Failure that this story is. You don't...you don't HAVE to read it, you know. You can still escape. ESCAPE NOW, before it's too late! .)

Also. MangKulas reviewed. I just want to let everyone know that I peed myself a little in spastic glee when I saw. MangKulas, one of these days I'm gonna hunt you down and stalk you.

I mean...make you brownies.

* * *

**...stays in las vegas.**

Mamori gauged that approximately three seconds had passed since Hiruma's eyes had found her, and perhaps she would have been impressed –and grateful—that his gaze hadn't left the safety of hers if she weren't so very busy being mortified, or trying to figure out the most dignified way to escape whatever unfamiliar darkness was now in those narrow, unsmiling green eyes.

She saw that he sensed her indecision, the way she was torn between bending to pick up her fallen towel and then perhaps diving behind the bed to shriek at him to leave until she was blue in the face (which would, of course, give him the satisfaction of having visibly and emotionally rattled her, of making her lose her composure, which would, in turn, give him leverage in any contests between them in the future), or simply bolting for the bathroom (which would have much the same consequences, except that she'd also be gifting him with an action shot of her in the nude, which was _exceedingly_ embarrassing to think about), or just standing there –somewhere between dumb and defiant—trying to pretend that the whole thing Wasn't Happening At All until he realized it was time for him to turn around and _leave_ (which was equally the least and most desirable of her options; she could retain her pride at the cost of her dignity, and frankly, she wasn't sure what exactly she would gain or lose in this scenario). The latter option seemed to be becoming more and more unlikely as she realized that this was _Hiruma_ standing before her, invariably happy to make bad situations worse, and clearly sadistically amused by her turmoil.

That much, at the very least, was obvious. But panic began to set in, at long last, when she understood that _because_ this was Hiruma, there were always options that she _hadn't_ explored, hadn't even considered –_his_. And, furthermore, if Hiruma had decided to turn this into some sort of sick _game_ to satisfy his morbid curiosity concerning how she would handle this situation, then, being Hiruma, he would be expecting to _win_. Mamori swallowed, and was horrified when his eyes followed the movement, sure that his eyes moved back up so ponderously because they were tracing the line of her blush as it crept up her neck and burned into her cheeks.

When at last his eyes found hers again, there was a dangerous look in them that was completely foreign to her. It was predatory, sinister, almost…almost…_hungry_. Her heart was pounding in her chest as those green eyes (now verily electric) communicated Something to her that had her breaths escaping more shallowly as they finally broke away from hers and traveled shamelessly down the delicate curve of her jaw, the smooth column of her neck, slowing as they encountered the breadth of her collar bone and small shoulders, pausing entirely as they met the swell of her breasts –and just as Mamori decided that she'd had enough of this game (that this sort of thing _should not be_ a game at all), just as she'd opened her mouth to tell him –in no uncertain terms—to get the hell out of her room, Hiruma outmaneuvered her.

His eyes left wherever they'd been on her body (she dared not make any guesses as to how far they'd traveled) and flashed heatedly back to her face, and just as suddenly he was stalking toward her, his strides measured and even and for all appearances impervious but for the belying intensity of his gaze. Her mind encouraged immediate flight even as her heels dug into the carpet, and she would have dropped an appalled glance down at her feet if the Devilbats' captain were not abruptly right before her, his eyes caging hers, ghosting in their periphery over the pink of her cheeks. She swallowed, newly uncertain, still vaguely furious, but now distracted by the discomfiting nearness of him.

Her mind was whirling in a thousand different directions –he was still trying to mess with her, she was still _naked_, she'd never seen his irises quite that shade of green before, he was far too close and she could feel the heat of him, could smell that he, too, had recently showered, and she was _naked_ and he smelled like aftershave and gunpowder and she was _horrified_ that she was just standing there, that the mere fact of his proximity seemed to be drawing her in. She didn't even realize at first that she was leaning toward him, standing on tip-toes to reach him, eyelids pulled by gravity and something far more inexplicable toward the floor with her towel, and the last thing she sees is his smirk, curling despicably upward (he was still winning, she thought, and decided that she didn't care, because she felt like maybe she wasn't _losing_) as his head dipped lower to—

--just miss hers. She stumbled forward a step, her chest brushing across his before she caught herself and abruptly jerked backward, face now fully red, hands flying to cover herself, mouth opening to speak, eyes snapping open –but she froze again when his breath ghosted over the shell of her ear, nimble, steady fingers pulling strands of hair out of the way as he spoke, quietly delivering instructions to her about her notes while they stood there, connected only by the warmth of his words as they circled into her brain in dizzying spirals. She bit her lip and struggled to keep still so as not to upset the balance of this increasingly precarious and incredibly vexing situation by doing something untoward or telling, like trembling, or breathing. She no longer had a handle on what was happening, and lack of experience left her dealing with Hiruma's perplexing behavior by trying to ignore her own mystifying responses to it. Like the tight sensation in her abdomen, or the weakness of her knees, or the peculiar way that world seemed to be tilting…

In what seemed to be developing into a pattern, Mamori was late to understand that Hiruma had finished speaking and stepped back just so. Her brain wasn't functioning at nearly the capacity she was used to, and it frustrated and bewildered her that she couldn't seem to separate her thoughts from the heaviness of the air between them. Her eyes sought his, wide and unsure, and she _could_ _not_ comprehend the emotion she saw there, and unexpectedly, unadorned, he growled out a '_fuck_' that was uncharacteristic not by fact of utterance but by the raw, _naked_ quality it had assumed. She tried to decipher what it meant, what his eyes were now openly concealing, but he had suddenly turned, free hand curling spasmodically into a fist at his side as he stalked out of the room, just as coolly and unhurried as he had entered it, looking for all the world like Nothing had just happened.

After several minutes of staring blankly at the door, Mamori found it within her to move again, almost mechanically stooping to retrieve her fallen towel as her mind processed the events of the past few moments. Hiruma, barging into her room unannounced. Hiruma, stoically realizing she was naked. Hiruma, brazenly appraising and then _approaching_ her, apparently unfazed by her nudity as he then proceeded to whisper football-nothings in her ear. Hiruma's eyes burning green and raw with—Mamori swallowed, a dawning epiphany making her suddenly terribly sure that she'd narrowly avoided disaster of the sort that upstanding members of the Disciplinary Committee might later be blackmailed for.

At this point, Mamori's trembling shock was melting gradually into righteous indignation, and her mood, so sunny only moments before, had blackened considerably by the time she was (rather gratefully) dressed. Unsure what to do with her roiling emotions, she threw herself into the tasks she had before her, namely note-consolidation and team-briefing. She was hardly even aware of the team (conspicuously short one pointy-eared captain) –even Sena, the dear—for most of the day, until Suzuna, frighteningly perceptive for someone she'd just met, started prying, and she had to excuse herself from the late lunch they were all having so she could escape to her room to collect herself.

Which was, of course, when she found Hiruma's equivalent of salt on her –very fresh, very embarrassing—wound: an exquisite, glittering blue cocktail dress…made to her exact measurements.

* * *

If at the end of this travesty you are left feeling something along the lines of 'uuuuhhh...' or 'WTF?,' then worry not, friend.

I'm right there with you.

Constructive criticism would not only be appreciated, but is probably necessary. Gods, this is such a mess...

CALLIPYGIAN.


	6. very serious trouble

(future fic)

Eight cups of coffee induced this drabble.

That's the only explanation I can offer without having to kill you.

DOI.

* * *

She knew she was in (very serious) trouble when, for her eighteenth birthday, Hiruma handed her a cheerfully cherry red box (with no other obvious embellishments), and she peeled back the paper and then the lid (without suspicion or hesitation or the slightest hint of circumspection) to find a newly-polished and sterling silver handgun.

And she thought it was sweet.

--

Hiruma knew he was in (very serious) trouble when, in response to his (exceedingly generous) gift, one of his (ex-) manager's fine eyebrows arched primly, and one corner of her mouth pulled back (not-entirely-unappealingly) to flash just a hint of pearly white, and she lifted the Single-Action Ballester-Molina pistol steadily, fluidly releasing the safety and cocking the hammer in one jarringly easy and incongruously delicate movement as she leveled it at his head and wondered vaguely,

"This thing loaded, Hiruma-kun...?"

And he thought it was fucking adorable.

* * *

Their children are going to be so f-cked up.

Cooooooofffffffeeeeeeeeeee.


	7. occupational silence

This is dedicated to all those lovely folk at the HiruMamo LJ community. They're pretty much fabulous.

This is also dedicated to Frederick Frappuccino, my good friend who does not have much longer to live. (bahahaha)

Mmmm, pancakes.

DOI.

* * *

Their silence is nothing more than silence –pure and unadulterated. And though it is shared (they are both there, within it), it is neither comfortable or awkward, companionable or tense. It is just a fact: she is poring over weeks' worth of accumulated data and compiled statistics and her own myriad assemblages of charts and figures and stratagems (the lattermost of which Hiruma had gone over himself and adjusted or approved), and he, as ever, is leaning back in a chair, fingers flying over keys, working on things at which lowly mortals could only conjecture (and pale with fear that it might involve _them_).

She couldn't be bothered to steal furtive glances at him – she was busy and her mind was elsewhere occupied. For the most part, she hardly even remembered he was there at all, except to register subconsciously the steady 'clack clack clack' of his keystrokes.

As for him –well, why the hell would he need (or want, for that matter) to look at the fucking manager? She wasn't making a spectacle of herself; she wasn't saying anything important –or at all—and he wasn't some lovesick fucking monkey with nothing better to do than ogle some uptight fucking woman.

--

At half-past eleven in the evening, Mamori had had enough of fighting sleep, and –quite without thinking—she leaned (not forward, like she should have, onto an obvious and uncaring tabletop) left, eyes falling shut as soon as her head found a suitable resting place (Hiruma's shoulder), and not long thereafter, she was asleep.

At one past half-past eleven, Hiruma _almost_ reacted to the sudden weight at his shoulder with irate startlement and a terse, heated question to the effect of what the hell the fucking woman thought she was doing. But it took perhaps half an instant for him to discern the evenness of her breathing, her relaxed, almost-slumped over posture, the way the pencil in her hand was already falling out of her slack grip, and instead he continued typing, (almost) without missing a beat.

He could always wake her up later, anyway, rudely and abruptly.

He smirked.

* * *

I'm on a roll.

A big, buttery, garlic-y roll.


	8. going steady

DOI.

(immediately post-Christmas Bowl --if they don't win I think I'm going to spontaneously combust. this manga is like crack, damn it.)

Speed-written. Forgive mistakes.

* * *

It's impossible, of course, that they beat the Teikoku Alexanders. More than just odds and favor had been against them; the other team was a highly-skilled contingent of only the most elite players in the high school circuit, not the least of which included the catching prodigy Taka Honjoand the _actual_ Eyeshield 21, Takeru Yamato, in whose shadow Sena had unknowingly been laboring all year.

And yet here they were, the unlikely victors, incredulous and awe-stricken as everyone else in the stadium, though also jubilant and ecstatic as it began at last to settle in that they'd _won_. Really and truly, against all odds (with the exception of Hiruma's, naturally, but he did his math a little differently than everyone else) and the impossible adversities they'd faced to even be allowed to play on the same _field_ as the peerless and invincible Alexanders, they had come out on top.

Mamori could hardly believe it herself, despite Hiruma's many, many declarative –and always coarse—assurances and her own unflagging conviction in her team. If she felt any guilt over her apparent lack of faith (however small), it took a backseat to present circumstances, which called for uninhibited exuberance, which she was all-too-happy to indulge.

She made her rounds with the lot of them, whooping and hollering (Togano, Jumonji, Kuroki, and Komusubi couldn't seem to stay grounded –it was actually quite silly to see them jumping to and fro like crazed animals) and crying and hugging (she was, perhaps, a little surprised at herself when, in her paroxysms of joy she hugged poor Sena near to the brink of asphyxiation, but he seemed –mostly—untroubled by her elated violence) and screaming (the latter mostly with Suzuna, and she was sure they achieved pitches that only animals could fully appreciate) like this was the happiest moment of their lives (and she supposed that so far, this probably _was_).

It didn't take her long, however, to realize that three of the chief elements were missing from the frenzied celebration, and when she finally managed to break away from what she could only suppose were Monta's best attempts to dazzle her into stupefaction, she located them on the sidelines, distant and silent as their gazes panned from the team to the field to the stadium and back again in alternating circuits. Happily, she moved toward them to extend congratulations. Sadly, she slowly came to recognize the look in their eyes as one of parting; she was watching them say goodbye to the entirety of this world, and reflectively, she understood the unwitting symbolism in their having intentionally set themselves apart –this moment belonged to them as much as to anyone else on the team, but it was the _last_ moment they would share like this, and they knew they were already fading into the past, so here they stood at the cusp of present and bygone, observing.

When Mamori reached them, she was able to discern the individual expressions on their faces, divorced from that haunting perception, and smiled at each of them in turn, Kurita with tears in his eyes and a quivering lip, Musashi with a hint of a grin pulling his lips up at one corner (his finger as ever twisting absently in his ear), and Hiruma staring straight ahead, hands on his hips, a huge smirk on his demonic face. She found she was most pleased by this last expression –it was new to her, wholly satisfied and proud, lacking a certain sharp malignance that made it…_softer_ somehow, though still very much Hiruma in all the ways that counted.

For a moment, she simply stood before them, relishing the serenity of their silence, but it wasn't long until she couldn't help herself, and she threw her arms around Kurita and hugged him hard. His tears finally spilled over and she found herself crying all over again, but eventually they parted with tremulous, joyful laughter, and she turned to Musashi. She liked Musashi, more than she could say and certainly more than their sparse interactions may otherwise have indicated –he was taciturn and sometimes gruff, but he was exceptionally keen and incredibly thoughtful, and she enjoyed being near him. He was looking down at her with bemusement glittering in his eyes, and a youthful glimmer to which she was unaccustomed. Uncertain what physical boundaries were in place between them, she offered her hand to him, which he grinningly accepted before he pulled her into an embrace that was singularly firm and ridiculously strong and somehow still considerately gentle and comfortably affectionate. When he released her, she gifted him with an open, shy smile and then directed her attentions to the last of the sophomore trio, the dementedly endearing captain, Hiruma Yoichi. It gave her a strange, ephemeral thrill to think his first name when so often in her mind he was simply 'Hiruma-kun,' and she fought the inexplicable blush wanting to rise in her cheeks as her eyes found his.

At first, he didn't look at her at all, and she had time to ruminate over how much her opinion of him had changed since they'd first locked horns at the beginning of the year. He was unpredictable and his training methods were unorthodox; he was depraved –sometimes just _cruel_—and had no compunctions about using questionable (occasionally even _illegal_) means to achieve his goals; he was uncouth and rude and merciless and incorrigible at the worst of times. But she'd been forced by circumstances to get to know him, and she knew now that in addition to his various and sundry detestable qualities, he was also obscenely intelligent, absurdly effective, and strikingly determined. He was also insightful, perversely thoughtful, and unquestionably loyal. And, surprising everyone (maybe even himself, she mused), this last game had shown them all that he was capable of extraordinary faith in the people for whom he cared. He was by no means misunderstood –he was just as devious and underhanded as he made himself out to be, but underneath all that, really, he was just a creampuff.

Mamori was disturbed that she'd made the analogy for more than one reason, chief among them being that she had an inordinate _love_ of (addiction to?) creampuffs, despite how bad for her they ultimately were and because of just how sinfully _exquisite_ they invariably tasted –she cleared her throat loudly, which at long last drew Hiruma's gaze to her, that familiar smirk slanting –knowingly?!—down at her, and this time she was battling with Bad Thoughts as well as a blush, and her intentions to give _him_ a hug were suddenly rescinded on the grounds that the minute she touched him he would _know_, and that absolutely, positively was _not_ what she had come over here to convey, and anyway, she had only just figured it out for herself and needed time to think about it without the unhelpful, distracting closeness of his person, and really, he probably wouldn't even go for it, anyway –inspiration struck at her most desperate moment, when she was sure she was simply going to have to flee and deal with the repercussions later, and suddenly she schooled her features into an expression of lofty indifference (ignoring the alluring way his eyebrow lifted in question), very coolly crossed her arms, lifted her nose into the air, and traipsed away. She saw his eyes narrow as she disappeared from his periphery, but he didn't turn his head or his body to follow her departure.

Musashi and Kurita both visibly started when the Demon Captain of the Devilbats went unexpectedly stumbling forward half a second later, watching with wide eyes as he whipped around in a fury to identify the dead man who had _dared_ to kick _him_ in the ass, but all they saw was Mamori, a small smile on her face, making tracks to the bench to start cleaning up. Musashi bellowed a laugh while Kurita looked worried, hands flying out in front of him in a placating gesture.

"A silent kick must just mean…er…Hiruma-kun, it's probably just…" He began, fumbling for words. Musashi, recovering from his clipped hysterics, popped a hand to his waist and returned his gaze to the field, a full-blown smile now etched onto his face.

"I suppose this means you're going steady now." He said at some length, and Hiruma's answering grin was wide and leering.

"Fucking woman doesn't know what she's gotten herself into."

* * *

I can't say for certain, but I'm pretty sure that the next thing I have planned is Smut-alicious.

Probably-Definitely more graphic than Snapshot Porn.

...we'll see.


	9. obligatory blanket scenario

**Prompt: How about a Christmas night blanket scenario? (Aka, Hirumamo get stranded somewhere during a snowstorm with only one blanket to share? ^_^)**

My (obnoxious) Secret Santa gift for banditscribe on The LJ. (Yes, 'the' lj. Like 'the' consumption. Or 'the' herpes. Maybe I'm just fond of articles, damn it.)

Also.

I spiked the Nog I left for Santa. If he didn't make it to your house, or if he was violent, or if you found him in the bushes out front, passed out cold, you have only me to blame.

**

* * *

**

It was a matter of practicality, really. An issue of expediency. A measure of prudence, discretion, comfort, and eventually, inevitably, of survival.

The semantics of the situation were hardly significant, however, because it didn't quite matter how her mind managed to phrase it; she was not going to approach him about it, not going to bring it up or attempt by artifice or subtlety to allude to the subject. Sooner or later, someone would come for them, and no one –Hiruma, most especially—would know that the thought had even crossed her mind. With time and perhaps some clever avoidance tactics, she may herself forget that she had entertained the notion. Even if she _was_ cold and miserable. Even if _he_ seemed –as ever—remarkably contained and otherwise entirely impervious. Even though it was forebodingly dark, even though the walls were craggy and bare and deceptively uniform, thick shadows seeming longer and deeper in the gloom, even though outcroppings were almost impossible to see; oblique, pernicious phantasms waiting patiently to pull her down into the sinister shadows of the cavern—

"I still can't believe we won the Christmas Bowl," she said softly, wistfully, refocusing her mind on something less dreadful than the ominous pitch of the cave. The times she resented her mental gifts were few and far between, but she was cursing her colorful imagination and keen intellect now, when both were conspiring to drag her down with irrational fears that they _should_ have been working to allay. Standing opposite her in the small funnel of a room, she caught a brief flash of white and electric green, just a flick of his eyes, really, before he turned back to the tiny cell phone in his hand and the meager light it provided, using every trick he knew (he had assured her, gruffly) to get a signal. It was that brief look, irritated and dismissive, that had her immediately regretting speaking at all; he was doing something productive and she wasn't being of any use by rattling off non-sequitur comments that had nothing to do with the situation at hand. It wouldn't be helpful to either of them if she inadvertently clued him in to her paranoia (the existence of which she hadn't fully appreciated until _now_, which was making it all the more difficult to process logically and thereby _deal with_); she had no business compounding their difficulties by making him worry over whether or not she'd be able to keep her head, not to mention the fact that he'd probably file the information away in his mind to use as blackmail material later, at least if they ever managed to escape and didn't die here…

She should be doing something, anything at all, to keep her mind busy and her frenetic, disorganized thoughts at bay. Crouching, holding her own phone to the ground, she used the small halo of light to examine the cave floor, looking for…well, anything potentially useful. Dry wood for a fire, perhaps stones that might serve well as flint (unless Hiruma had a lighter on him for some reason, but she'd ask about that in a few moments, when he wasn't occupied), any discarded tools left by previous hapless travelers, clues about an exit…

* * *

As if it weren't irritating enough that they were (at least apparently) stranded in the middle of fucking nowhere, that even his most powerful and reliable technological contraptions were failing –regardless of expert tinkering and deft manipulation—to get through to the outside world, and that apart from two small pistols, a pack of smokes, a lighter, a blanket and a couple bottles of water (compliments of the only other occupant of this dark prison), an all-important black notebook, and twelve cell phones, they had no tools with which to work –on top of everything else, the fucking manager appeared to be claustrophobic.

It was not a fear he had anticipated from her, which annoyed him, as it was always somewhat vexing to encounter small moments such as these that called to mind the fact that he was not, after all, omniscient. Additionally, he realized with some aggravation that he'd thought her above such illogical anxieties. But the signs were clear even if she seemed to think she was doing a convincing job of covering them up. She was alternately completely sedentary or frenetically occupied, and she appeared not to realize when she repeated actions she'd recently taken. She played distractedly with her phone, her eyes darted about in the dark unseeingly, widening or clamping shut occasionally when something unpleasant occurred to her. And she kept _talking_ to him, making inane, unimportant comments about the team, about school, about her friends or the Christmas Bowl, trying to distract herself from imagined terrors and keep herself upbeat. At length, she always seemed to finally comprehend that she was rambling, and the abnormally slow-firing synapses in her brain at last communicated to her mouth to be silent.

It was fucking _maddening_. And not just because it was inconvenient, which bothered him.

The only way to remedy the situation was to get them out of it, of course, so he tried to ignore her when she bent down again to comb the floor at her feet for fuck only knows what –for all he knew, she was inspecting the ground for invisible creatures—and he was further displeased that the simple task of tuning out an inhibitory, currently useless element was actually challenging.

He growled out an aggravated curse, rolling his eyes when she jumped at the sound, and focused on the glowing phone in his hand, ignoring his peripheral vision, which was feeding him images of the damned manager staring at him intently.

* * *

Mamori was transfixed by the whitish glow suffusing Hiruma's face, and was ephemerally concerned that she might be perilously close to forgetting herself and succumbing to the encroaching panic. His unexpected curse had startled her out of her downward spiral, however, and was a much needed dose of reality: she wasn't here alone, Hiruma was here, too, and he was smart, capable, and if anyone was going to get them out of this, it would be him.

It was because she was studying him, trying to force herself to stay connected to the present and not dwell on _other things_, that she caught the object of her current fascination: his hair. Even in the dark it was unnaturally bright, somewhere in between gold and platinum, sticking out at odd angles in some places and lying damp and heavy and flat in others from earlier, when they'd been caught outside in the snowstorm. But it wasn't the familiar blonde that held her attention.

She started to chuckle lightly, and Hiruma shot her another look that told her clearly that he thought she was losing her mind, laughing spontaneously as she was in the darkness for what appeared to be no reason at all. But she felt suddenly lighter –not blithe, necessarily, but heartened slightly.

In the next moment she was standing, stepping toward him at a leisurely pace, and before she knew it she was standing beside him, far enough away to not be invading his personal space but still much more closely than she usually came to be standing next to him voluntarily. She watched him glance at her with furrowed brows, suspicious and alert. Then, indulging the giddy insanity of the moment before it could be crushed by either him or herself, she reached up to run her fingers through the matted locks.

* * *

And so the fucking manager had clearly snapped. He supposed it was better than having her beating her fists against the walls and screaming for someone to free them, but her behavior was still bizarre and unnerving. He had just managed to get the damned phone to respond to him (and it had taken fucking long enough), and then the cracked girl had started giggling from her crouched position on the ground. Sparing her a quick look that should have told her exactly what he thought about her sanity, he manfully returned to the task at hand, not reacting visibly when she stood and started toward him, but readying himself to take any number of actions depending upon what she did next.

That's when her fingers –bare, he realized, and wondered how he could possibly have missed her taking off her gloves—started to pull through his hair, gently, just soft, cool, curious pressure against his scalp. The sensation was – he couldn't deny it—_pleasant_. He had the insane urge to exploit her unguarded affection by doing something far less…tame, but, as the Standard Operating Procedure demanded, he shut that train of thought down immediately and settled for glaring at her. At length, it occurred to him that the proper reaction was belated, so he opened his mouth to ask her what the fuck she thought she was doing, but she beat him to it by giggling. Again.

"It's softer than I thought it'd be," she said, and when her eyes slid to his she retracted her hand, but the look he caught in her eyes wasn't as much embarrassment as it was intrigued. "I guess I knew you dyed it; I mean, you're Japanese, after all, so it has to have been black at some point, but I guess I never really thought about it…" He didn't even attempt to check his eyebrow as it popped up in question, and she pointed grinningly at his hair in response. "The roots are starting to show. It's nothing too noticeable yet, I only saw it because…um…anyway, I'm sure it's just because it got so wet outside." She seemed more lucid, but he didn't want to test it out just yet by teasing her crudely about staring at him and very nearly admitting it. "I don't think I ever thought I'd get to _see_ it. Your actual hair color, I mean. I guess I didn't believe you'd be careless enough to ever let it show." She was teasing _him_ now, though, so maybe she wasn't as fragile as she had appeared moments ago. He wasn't about to admit that he might have been relieved, and he certainly didn't dwell on the fact that she had apparently been snapped out of her stupor by a few strands of black hair his injured arm had made difficult to reach the last time he'd dyed it. "Um, sorry." She laughed again, this time nervously, and moved back, crossing her arms before her and shooting her gaze deliberately down at the device in his hand. He smirked, glad to have her off-balance out of self-consciousness and not out of imagined fear. Then, ignoring the blush that blossomed on her cheeks, his fingers started flying over keys as nimbly as if it were a keyboard and not a phone pad.

He sent a message to each of the Deimon players, quick and to the point, but bearing all the details they might need to come and find them. Mere seconds had passed after he sent the message before the fucking manager started talking again.

"Did you…did you get it to work, Hiruma-kun?" She was craning forward slightly, trying to get a better look at the screen.

"We're in the middle of rural fucking Japan, manager. There's virtually no signal. It's fucking wet. The phones are soaked." She dropped her head and seemed to shrink in on herself. The expression on her face was disparaging, and his smirk climbed up another inch. "Of _course_ I fucking got through to someone. What do you think I am, a fucking idiot?" Glee alighted her countenance instantly, and in another short burst of her residual insanity, she unthinkingly leapt the short distance between them to throw her arms around him (which he _could_ have dodged, and perhaps would have, if it wouldn't have meant that she went hurtling face-first into the cave wall --or if he'd _wanted_ to), though she almost immediately pulled away, red in the face until she stumbled on her own feet, grimacing briefly. "Kekeke, don't be so quick to celebrate, fucking manager. We still have to rely on the fucking twerps to _find_ us." That appeared to bother her for a moment, but then she seemed to collect her thoughts and she smiled weakly at him.

"I believe in them." She said, and though her voice wavered her conviction was firm. His smirk became malicious and she turned away from it, spinning and stepping backward a couple of steps behind him before she slid down to a sitting position against the wall. It didn't look very comfortable, but she didn't complain about the wet floor or the cold rock at her back.

He watched her curl in on herself to conserve warmth, saw her clench her fingers into fists and was suddenly angry at her stupidity.

"Put your fucking gloves on, damned manager." He commanded, sadistically glad when she glared up at him with That Look in her blue eyes, perhaps signaling the beginning of one of their fabled fights that had the fucking idiots running for the hills for fear that they'd be caught in the crossfire.

"Don't _call_ me that, Hiruma-kun."

If he had to be stuck in a fucking hole in the middle of nowhere, he supposed he could do worse for company. At least (now that she seemed less irrationally crazy) she'd be entertaining until someone came to shovel them out of their avalanche-engendered cell.

* * *

Half an hour and two very exasperating arguments later, Mamori was reintroducing herself to the thought that she'd previously believed to be a product of the claustrophobia-induced madness.

Despite how very cross with him she currently was in the wake of their recent verbal sparring sessions, she found she was perversely glad of his antagonism. It had helped to distract her, to keep her mind exclusively focused on giving as good as she got without stooping to his level or getting flustered enough to concede victory to him. They _could_ have been talking about substantive things –strategy for the upcoming games in America, schoolwork, even, but nothing so uniquely captured her concentration as duking it out with the Devilbats' captain. It embarrassed her to think that he'd been fighting with her on purpose, that he had known after all about her 'condition,' and had been keeping her occupied. It was, she thought bemusedly, sort of sweet, in the only way he knew how to be –indirectly.

And it was this latter thought, coupled with the anxiety she was trying to quash from the less irrational fear of hypothermia (which certainly _felt_ like a very real threat at this point; every moment that went by she felt like something else on her was frozen), that made her think that maybe she should just swallow her pride and _ask_, or better yet, just _force him_ to—

"Hiruma-kun," she started, not speaking very loudly since he had long-since seated himself beside her, "I…um…" She cleared her throat, tried again. "Mind if I use one of your phones to go hound out my backpack…?" Wordlessly, he produced one for her, extending his long arm across the distance that separated them. She was very careful about not letting their fingers touch; this was going to be hard enough without having to think about how his skin felt. She felt the dull warmth of a blush creeping into her cheeks as she remembered combing her hand through his surprisingly smooth hair and climbed to her feet to retrieve her bag from the other side of the room.

Fearing that even the temporary isolation might let the dark thoughts back in, she felt the need to keep talking to him, more to reassure herself than anything else. She didn't expect what spilled out of her mouth anymore than he could have, though.

"It's so strange, Hiruma-kun. Everyone on the team thinks we're dating –Gen-kun's always teasing me about it—and my mom seems to be on board with the theory, no thanks to Ako-chan, and here we are, stuck in the most convenient and hackneyed plot device _ever_ –by ourselves in the middle of a cave for an extended period of time. This is _not_ going to help the rumors." She had felt completely detached from the speech while it was being made; she was looking for the bag, and some disembodied voice had stolen hers to say outrageous things to the demon quarterback of Deimon High. Backpack in hand, she stood, suddenly frozen by something more than cold. Mortification was apparently rather frigid, as well.

_How_ was any of that relevant? _What_ had brought that on? _Why_ hadn't she thought about the fact that it would make what she was about to do next horrendously complicated? And why, _why_ wasn't he saying anything? She was terrified to look back at him and see the expression on his face.

She was cold, she was afraid, maybe he would be able to dismiss this lapse in sanity as well as he had earlier, when she'd had the gall to touch his hair. Shivering, she hugged herself tightly, opened her bag, pulled out the folded emergency blanket she was suddenly disgustingly thankful she'd packed, and finalized her resolve. _This is no big deal_, she insisted to herself. _I've done this with Sena plenty of times during the winter. We'd sit on his back porch and sip hot tea and watch the snow fall. No big deal. No big deal…_

Except that this _wasn't_ Sena, and the longer they were trapped here, the more glaringly obvious that became.

* * *

Hiruma was carefully silent as he appraised the damned woman, who seemed utterly incapable of sticking to one mood. None of these were sides of her to which he was accustomed, and each was as frustratingly surprising as the next. The paranoia, the unwitting flirting, the mindless chatter; he was used to her being capable and implacable, compassionate and efficient, burning hot and cold but always sharp, never yielding ground without fighting for it first. She was a singular existence in his life; from the first moment she'd stood up to him to the _one evening_ she'd needed to memorize the entire Amefuto rulebook to her gross (and frankly fucking perplexing) ignorance of the identity of Eyeshield and back again to their startling propensity for working together (and working _very well_ at that), he was never entirely certain what she was going to do. Most of the time, she was just as predictable as the next person, and once he'd spent enough time around her, he gained a strong sense of how to rile her, or hurt her if he so chose, but she persisted on being a rogue element, on somehow circumventing the reach of his impossibly fast mind, and it was –as seemed to be the trend for the day—fucking annoying.

He was fairly sure he knew what was coming next, though, from her telling statement and her odd behavior and also the blanket dangling from the fingers of her right hand, still folded. This time, he vowed, he was throwing the SOP out the window; she was right, after all. This was the perfect fucking set-up, he had nothing better to do until the others showed up to bail them out, and he was eager to see how she would react.

And why not, besides? They had America to conquer, of course, but they'd won the Christmas Bowl, and their celebrations had been truncated by the news of impending battle in the States. They'd get swept back up into the chaos and strategy of football soon enough –for the moment, he was fucking frustrated, she was being fucking obvious, and they were fucking cold. He had one solution for all three problems, and when she turned at last and started walking toward him with fierce determination in the set of her jaw and azure uncertainty glimmering in her eyes, he smirked wickedly.

He'd put this off way too fucking long.

* * *

There was only one way to deal with Hiruma in battle mode (which, if his leering grin was any indication, he clearly was): head on, and aggressively. She stopped just short of her feet hitting his shins where he sat, legs crossed, against the wall. She could feel the blush burning up her neck and into her cheeks, but she met his eyes, hoping that the darkness and the cold would keep it from being overly visible. And then _she_ went into aloof intellectual mode and began to explain that the conservation of body heat is crucial in such times as these, that they didn't know how long it'd be until they were discovered and rescued, that they needed to make due with the resources they had, which were –tragically—rather limited. She held the blanket up to indicate just which resource she meant, swallowing heavily while she waited nervously for his scathing rejoinder, and when his grin shifted to Cruel, her eyes widened and then narrowed almost in one fluid motion, and she chided herself mentally for such a silly idea. She wasn't going to beg. She'd keep the blanket all for herself and he could just freeze to death for all she cared!

Scornful and hurt, she turned to sit beside him, albeit a safe distance away, muttering a terse 'never mind' as she started to take a step – only to be forcefully and abruptly jerked by her free wrist sideways and forward onto Hiruma's lap, where his long legs provided a strange, bony sort of seat. She tried to meet his eyes but couldn't; she willed her body to flee but it stubbornly stayed put. She gripped the blanket in her hand tightly when his large hands appeared on her waist and maneuvered her on top of him at a torturous pace. Her breath came in short bursts when he started dragging her forward, and she lost her grip on the blanket when he pulled her so close that she was fully straddling him. She finally met his gaze and became immediately, terribly conscious of him everywhere they were touching. She could feel his cool breath against her hair, the lithe muscle of his thighs beneath hers, the latent strength of his big hands as they continued their irresistible draw forward. Mamori didn't have a name for what she saw in Hiruma's ponderous gaze, but she knew what it was, and when the space between them was gone and she could feel the clench of his stomach muscles against her own abdomen (now roiling with precious, precious heat), she saw it for a madness far more potent and dangerous than any budding claustrophobia could ever inspire.

"You're right, manager, heat conservation is paramount." He released her to flip the blanket open and drape it over her shoulders, pulling on either side of the fabric to cage her against him, his eyes never leaving hers. "This arrangement is fine for now, but if those fucking shrimps take too fucking long, we're going to need to do something more physical to get our body temperatures up." She hated that she enjoyed the way he watched her swallow tremblingly as she realized just what sort of activity he was referring to, and she was horrified that she wished fleetingly that the others would never find them.

The whole thing felt surreal; this isn't happening, she thought. _Soon I'll wake up and be home with a terrible fever, and mother will be leaning over me reassuring me that this whole episode was a strange delusion which she will, naturally, never let me live down._

But Hiruma's hands were at her sides again, hastening her back to the present, slipping across her back to link there and hold her in place against him. And his body was straining forward, his eyes dropping from hers and to find her lips, and she found she could no longer help herself.

She closed the distance between them once and for all, and he seemed gleefully surprised only for the instant it took for him to kiss her back and slide ice cold fingers underneath her clothing and begin exploring. She let out a surprised yelp, but she enjoyed the sensation of his cool flesh against hers, which had become suddenly very warm. She arched into his touch and the growl that ripped free from his throat was enticing in primal sort of way she couldn't articulate.

Hiruma took control shortly thereafter, and she found herself thinking that it was one more thing that he was inexplicably skilled at, and then she wondered distractedly if it was just natural talent or if he'd just been getting action on the side from fans of the team, or girls at school…? Soon enough, however, all thoughts spilled out of her skill like an overturned glass, because his long fingers were squeezing her ass, and the sound she made against his lips was _totally_ accidental. She tried to pull away, suddenly self-conscious, suddenly shy, but he only used the opportunity to attack her neck, the shell of her ear, her jaw, and his hands seemed unable to keep still, roaming freely over her stomach, her breasts, her thighs, and by then she was well beyond caring about anything but feeling. Amidst his fervent explorations, Mamori tugged him roughly to her (which he seemed to enjoy _thoroughly_, if the new pressure against her inner thigh was anything to go by) and tangled her hands in his hair, this time fully relishing the inexplicable silky texture of it, gripping almost painfully as he rocked against her and she whimpered his name in a violent puff of cold air.

Feeling bold, she found the toned flesh of his abdomen underneath his dark apparel, her small fingers tripping nimbly up and across his chest, and he made a hard sound in his throat that she felt _everywhere_. When she lightly nipped his ear his hands loosened their hold abruptly and for one wild instant she clung to him, afraid that she had done wrong, that he was about to push her away, but he recovered quickly and was on the offensive again in no time.

So caught up in her ministrations was she that at first she was utterly unfazed by the bizarre phenomenon of Hiruma's pants vibrating. She was warm and tingly and didn't want to stop, didn't ever want to stop, and so was duly surprised and dismayed when, grumblingly, Hiruma pulled away from her, breathing as heavily as he had after the game with the Gods and scowling grimly.

Then, in a confounding turn of events (at least to Mamori's lust and trauma-addled brain), Hiruma adjusted their positions and pulled a phone out of his pocket, flipping it open and speaking into it in a tone of voice that had to have been terrifying to whoever was on the other end of the line.

Dimly, she was aware that she recognized the faraway-sounding basso timbre on the phone, but it took a second or two for her to register just what she was hearing.

_"…and we came inside, but you two were…occupied. You may have broken the kids, and I'm not sure Kurita was ready for that kind of…exposure."_ There was a pause wherein Mamori's mind started to work again, and then the indignity of the situation started to set in. And then the horror. _"I tried to reassure the little ones that it was all for the sake of staying warm, a survival mechanism, but they're refusing to go back in all the same. The path is clear, but I'll meet you halfway just in case. Don't make us wait too long. I've got a contract I need to get started on."_ Click.

She stared at Hiruma for a long moment before speaking.

"Gen-kun?" He nodded, his lips twisted into a snarl. "We're free?" Again, a curt, silent affirmation. "…oh." Awkwardly, she moved off and away from him, standing and readjusting her clothing. She didn't look at him as she stooped to recover her blanket, didn't speak as she folded and repacked it, but she startled to discover him behind her after she'd hoisted the bag over her shoulders, questions of what they were going to do with themselves when this was all over flying from her mind when he framed her face with his hands and kissed her, this time slowly, with careful deliberation that left her weak in the knees.

When he pulled away this time, he had that devilish smile back in place and a response ready for her unasked queries.

"Let's go beat the shit out of the Americans. And then we finish this, manager."

He grabbed her hand, and blushing, she left with him.

* * *

*meekly* Happy Creezmast, banditscribe. I triiiiiiiiiiied. *dies*

(f***********ck)


	10. he dreams a dream of aprons

A scrap I recovered from the archives.

Enjoy, chums.

Or else.

* * *

The way her lips press together in that sumptuous pout is agonizing, and the words that follow are nothing short of malevolent.

"_Hiruma_-_kun_," her voice is like melting chocolate; warm, sensuous, irresistible, "_let me help you polish your gun_." And then the world _bends_, tilting dizzyingly as the scene skips forward like a movie with missing footage, and then her thighs are crushing the air out of him as she straddles him, the elegant bow of her spine arching sharply while her head tips gradually backward, exposing the porcelain-pale line of her throat, her breasts heaving rhythmically into his chest through the barely-there apron as his name staggers brokenly out of her mouth, again and again and—

"Hiruma-kun?" And there's Anezaki, leaning over him, cool hand pressed to his forehead, bright eyes betraying anxiety and concern. He glares at her absently, mostly out of sheer force of habit, and opens his mouth to snap at her when it dawns on him quite suddenly that she's wearing that damnable yellow apron. Now there's a buffering layer of clothing beneath it, of course, but his mind can't seem to move past the ochre fabric and the way it had just been clinging to the shapely curves of her body, lithe contours the Deimon High uniform are softening or obscuring entirely.

"You were tossing in your sleep; I was just checking on you." Her fingers pull carefully away from his face, and the phantom chill that follows in the wake of her touch annoys him. "You're a little warm, you know. Maybe you should call it a night…?"

"I'm fine, fucking manager. Stop fussing like a fucking mother hen." She frowns at him reprovingly, clearly irked, but she appears to understand his curt dismissal for what it is and flounces angrily away from him without another word, gracefully vacating the space of his personal bubble.

"Anyway, I'm just gonna finish up here and then head out." She tells him crossly.

"The hell do I care?" He sneers, deliberately crass, anticipating the explosion of her inner-livewire. (He's _counting_ on it, actually.)

She doesn't disappoint: half a heated diatribe later, she's wielding her broom in challenge and jerking the apron away from her body, casting it between them like a gauntlet, _daring_ him to cross her further.

He doesn't disappoint her, either: he lobs a series of callous deprecations at her, all variations on a truly malicious theme, edging slowly toward her while her lip begins to curl enticingly.

By the time he's looming over her, Anezaki's cheeks are fully flushed and her chest is definitely heaving, and that's all the permission he needs, really, to bat the broom out of his way and grab her.

* * *

I'd planned for this to be a great deal more raunchy, but this works, too, I suppose.


End file.
